Spending the Stimulus looks at local business

So far, $389 billion of the nearly $8 billion dollar stimulus has been spent nationwide. Recovery.gov, the website designed for stimulus spending transparency says the program has created or saved close to 683,000 jobs.

When you investigate the numbers you can see recipients of funds like Saguache County Colorado say that only 2 dozen jobs have been created with $46,000 used for children's Head Start programs.

These questionable reports of jobs don’t stop in Colorado, in Camplesville, Kentucky Recovery.gov reports Moores Shoes created 9 jobs from only an $890 grant. That means each new job received a salary of less than 100 dollars a year.

So where do you go to find jobs actually created from the recovery act? Well all you need to do is look in your own back yard at the Wiregrass Rehabilitation Center Market.

"Now that the store has opened we now have eleven individuals that came through the training program that have disabilities that are working in the program. Three of them have moved towards cashiers to the point that they're about ready for community employment," said Jack Sasser Administrator W.R.C Market.

The W.R.C Market is a close-out center that employees people with disabilities and trains them for mainstream retail work. The market got its start from a $200,000 stimulus grant.

"It's kind of seed money and the seed money gets it started and we get something like this and we see a great result from it," said Mark Vossel, Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Services

Vossel 's department, who issued the grant says most of the requests he has received are for equipment and capital purchases, which was not the original purpose of the stimulus program.

"Of course our goal was to develop programs that would result in jobs and what has been great is this place truly resulted in jobs for people in the Wiregrass area," said Vossel.

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